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WonderAnimal adaptation fact

The saiga, an antelope of the Central Asian steppes, has an enlarged, flexible nose that filters out dust in summer and warms and moistens freezing air in winter before it reaches the lungs.

Saiga antelope

NatureBiologyClimateScience

The story behind the card

Saigas live on the dry grasslands of Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Mongolia, and herds migrate hundreds of kilometres between summer and winter pastures. Their numbers collapsed after the Soviet Union broke up: poaching of males for their horns, used in traditional Chinese medicine, cut the population by about 95 per cent. In May 2015, during unusually warm, humid weather, a bacterium the animals normally carry harmlessly, Pasteurella multocida, caused a blood infection that killed about 200,000 saigas in Kazakhstan within a few weeks, more than half of all saigas then alive. Protection from poaching has since let the Kazakh herds recover so strongly that in 2023 the International Union for Conservation of Nature moved the species from Critically Endangered to Near Threatened.

Türkçe oku
Orta Asya bozkırlarında yaşayan bir antilop olan sayganın iri ve esnek burnu, yazın tozu süzer, kışın da dondurucu havayı akciğerlere ulaşmadan önce ısıtıp nemlendirir.

Saygalar Kazakistan, Rusya, Özbekistan ve Moğolistan'ın kurak otlaklarında yaşar; sürüler yaz ve kış otlakları arasında yüzlerce kilometre göç eder. Sovyetler Birliği dağıldıktan sonra sayıları çöktü: geleneksel Çin tıbbında kullanılan boynuzları için erkeklerin avlanması, nüfusu yaklaşık yüzde 95 azalttı. Mayıs 2015'te olağandışı sıcak ve nemli bir havada, hayvanların normalde zararsızca taşıdığı Pasteurella multocida bakterisi bir kan enfeksiyonuna yol açtı; Kazakistan'da birkaç hafta içinde yaklaşık 200.000 sayga, yani o sırada yaşayan saygaların yarısından fazlası öldü. Kaçak avcılığa karşı alınan önlemler sayesinde Kazakistan'daki sürüler öyle güçlü toparlandı ki Uluslararası Doğayı Koruma Birliği (IUCN) 2023'te türü “kritik tehlikede” kategorisinden “tehdide açık” kategorisine indirdi.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Saiga antelope
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